


Breathe

by marshrio



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parent Amanda (Detroit: Become Human), Connor Needs A Hug, Connor is a YouTuber, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oh also, Organ Transplantation, Sickfic, Social Media, YouTube, amanda one hundred per cent abandoned him when she realised she didn't want a sick child :), because i love them and i can make it that way. fight me, but he is also dying of a nondescript lung disease and he needs a lung transplant like TODAY, i don't know where this is going but i think it will be fun, rk1k - Freeform, the rating might bump up to M sometime but ill add warnings if it does, this is going to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26813944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marshrio/pseuds/marshrio
Summary: Connor Stern, 19, desperately needs a lung transplant. He's also the mysterious youtuber, RK800, who vlogs about living life enclosed in a hospital, using the money from his patreon to fund his stay in Detroit's best hospital. Markus Manfred, 22, lost his father last year, and like many others he used Connor's videos to help to navigate the hospital system, and grief, and how-to-remove-an-IV so Carl could sneak some life into his last days; he still gets his morning coffee from the hospital's cafe. And at the very last minute - and that means *very* last - Connor lucks out: there's a car accident in the dead of night. A pair of lungs comes in. He suddenly has a rest-of-his-life.Having spent the first nineteen years of his life in a hospital, Connor now just has to figure out what he's going to do with it. Maybe the cute stranger he meets in the cafe could be a good place to start.
Relationships: Connor/Markus (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 149





	1. Inhale

**Author's Note:**

> y'all ever make a whole new account to post a fanfic on because you're too embarrassed by your other fandoms

Statistically speaking, he had lived longer than he should have done. Connor stood with both hands wrapped around his IV pole, watching the rain as it slapped against the window. He wasn’t sure his legs were quite weak enough to give out under him, but he hadn’t used them very often (his lungs weren’t good enough to walk, really), so he gripped the pole anyway. The nurses would have scolded him for being out of bed. Connor, however, had an aptitude for breaking the rules, and he wanted to watch the people in the parking lot, below - he had lived his entire life in the concrete jungle that was Detroit, but there was one woman who was in from Arizona, presumably to watch someone die. Her car’s license plate was bluish, with a little cactus to one side. She drove a white Chevrolet, which made Connor wonder whether she was driving on to some other destination: it was a nice car to be completing a thirty-hour road trip in. It was strange to witness how people outside of this medical prison made plans: _I’ll reach Detroit, and once she dies, I’ll go on to Canada, and…_

They used the future tense so easily. Without even thinking about it.  
  
“Enjoying the rain, Connor?”  
  
“I’m people-watching, Anne. The lady in the chevrolet might be leaving.”

Anne Turner - Nurse Turner, most of the time - was his nurse. She wasn’t unkind, but she was very busy, and she had signed up to work with kids, not teenagers. Connor had sort of overstayed his welcome in pediatrics (he was 20, this Summer), in part because this was a smallish hospital - they didn’t really have a free adult bed for him to lie around and die in - and in part because they hadn’t expected him to live this long. He should have been dead already. If that were his family member, out there, in the white Chevrolet, waiting for one chapter of her life to close before she could get on with the next one, Connor felt sure she would have skipped ahead in the book.

“Did you happen to detect your O2 levels?” It was good-humoured.

The clip around his finger, meant to be monitoring that precise thing, was discarded on the bed. Connor turned to reach for it, willing enough, but the move was too fast -  
  
“Whoa!” Nurse Turner caught him as he slipped against the glass of the window. It was cold. There was a layer of condensation on the inside of the glass; the thin material of his shirt came away wet, on the shoulder, where he had hit. 

“I’m okay.”  
  
“Are you sure? Hon, you’re sick. You really shouldn’t be -”

“Got it,” he cut her off, and he pulled out of her grip (he had to) so he could clamber back into bed. He had to catch his breath, afterward, which he did in great gulps so that when the monitor was reattached, his O2 levels only read _low_. Nurse Turner wanted him to focus on breathing (she didn’t have to say it for him to know), so she pulled over the ever-empty guest chair by the foot of the bed and sat herself down beside him, her clipboard in hand. She was trying deliberately hard to be relaxed. Connor processed this - her body language - while he sat there, panting after something as small as standing up for a few minutes. His heart beat wildly in his chest, behind the tattered pair of lungs (surgery after surgery after surgery), trying to pick up the slack left by his low oxygen.  
  
Nurse Turner had bad news, and three pamphlets, with her. She had come back to have The Talk, again. Connor’s old social worker had likely sent her. He had not requested a new one, after losing the one he’d had from paeds. They’d never helped.

The O2 came up, with the tube back in place, and Nurse Turner ventured, “Do you know why I’m here, Con?”

He didn’t like being called ‘Con’. She didn’t know this, as she had never asked. Connor watched her, but she had a whole spiel to get through; it didn’t matter what he said. There were a lot of things in this building where it just did not matter what he said.

“The social worker’s asked me to speak to you again about starting palliative care. There’s a lovely hospice for youth in Lansing - you’d be looked after better, there. There would be kids your own age -”  
  
“I’m nineteen.”

“I meant that the next oldest patient in our ward is 13, Connor.”

They looked at each other for a beat. Nurse Turner continued, “We just think it’s something worth considering. I know you’re holding out for a donor, sweetheart, but what if that doesn’t happen?”

She asked this seriously, as though Connor had not considered that outcome. Something hot twisted in his insides, and he tilted his head to the side. Surveyed her, to see if she was genuinely asking. She was. She waited for his answer, even.

“Then I’ll die,” he spelled out for her, “it’s the likely outcome of this scenario. I have a terminal lung disease, Nurse Turner. Aren’t you supposed to be aware of that?”

“You’re dying, sweetheart.” 

“Statistically speaking, there’s always a chance for unlikely events to take place.”

Nurse Turner leant forward, to touch his hand, where it rested on his knee. Connor was cross-legged on his bed, supported by his pillow. He did not withdraw his hand. “Don’t rely on a statistical anomaly, Con.”  
  
He withdrew it, now. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll give up all hope, I didn’t realise that would be more convenient.”

“You know that’s not what I meant, Connor.”

“You want the bed to open up for someone who stands a chance.”

“I _want_ you to be at peace.”

Connor looked at her, drily. She looked back, equally as unimpressed, so he decided to voice it, “I can think of at least one way I could feel more peaceful, right now.”

Nurse Turner broke. She half-smiled, which was a victory, in Connor’s book - he looked away, to hide it, because he quite enjoyed the idea of being a surly teenager. There were only so many people inside this hospital whom he spoke to on a regular basis. Anne Turner was one of those people, and she did not hate him antagonising her.

She put the three pamphlets for different palliative care programs on the little bedside table, and she said, “Just think about it, Con, okay?”

He didn’t like being called Con. He looked up, and almost said as much, but instead he inclined his head. Half a nod. The nurse left, feeling victorious, and Connor had the good patience to wait until she left before he tore the papers in half and dropped them into his wastepaper basket. Maybe he should have been considering these programs, but he didn’t _intend_ to die - it would have felt like giving up, or giving in. His roots were already down in Detroit, would they survive the trip out to Lansing? And he had better odds, statistically, of sourcing an organ, here. Fewer people to compete with than in a major city. It was slim, but they were better odds.

The only thing he had accepted of this nature had been the Make-a-Wish program, when he was fifteen years old, just as things were beginning to get really bad: he had wanted to go on a ride-along with a police detective.

Detective Anderson had taken him. He’d seen a _real_ dead body. Connor had squatted right down and looked in the woman’s eyes, he’d seen what unseeingness looked like. He had turned around to track her gaze; found out that the last thing she’d ever seen was the wall of her apartment. She was oddly still. He’d asked if he could touch her, but Detective Anderson had not had gloves (odd, on reflection; Connor had since decided he’d probably just wanted to avoid letting the 15-year-old disturb their body), so he didn’t know what the chill was like. He reached up to touch the damp patch of his t-shirt, at his shoulder, where he had brushed the window. It was cold, and a little bit wet, and somehow familiar, like being haunted by something that hadn’t happened yet. There had been a settling, as of late. His insides had grown used to the idea of being done, of needing to sleep, of letting go. He looked at his hand, half expecting it to come away covered in blood, evidence of his impending doom.

Nothing. Just wet. It wasn’t even quite wet enough to shine in the light, just to have that phantom chill. He swallowed.  
  
Connor reached over to hook one of his too-clean white sneakers from the foot of the bed and chucked it at the door, so that it slipped the rest of the way closed. The room was empty, now. Just his own breathing, and three torn-up pamphlets in his wastepaper basket. He lay back in his pillows. Closed his eyes.

Then he rolled over for the phone he’d pawned off Michael-the-14yo’s deathbed (literally), and he logged online. It had been weeks, since he’d last uploaded a video - he hadn’t had the breath for it. He still didn’t, really, but he was terminally ill with a lung disease that was eating away at his ability to draw air: he couldn’t always wait until he had the energy to fake it.

So he opened the camera, made sure it was the exterior cam - the one facing away from him; nobody knew his face or his name, and he liked it that way - and he started filming.

“Hi. It’s been a while.”  
  
The videos that RK800 uploaded were all in this sort of style. He wasn’t sure what about them made them popular, actually. Since the beginning, all he’d done was sit in the low light of a hospital room, with the rain pitter-pattering on the window, and share what it was like living in a hospital, alone; it hadn’t earned him a huge following, but there were a lot more than he’d thought. A couple million people fascinated to know him. “I’m glad you stuck with me.” Connor was filming the foot of the bed, but he stood up, now, and moved to the window, taking care to aim the camera low enough that the glass could not catch his reflection, besides the too-pale skin and the way he hugged the IV pole. He had to catch his breath, so there was a solid ten seconds of empty footage just of the rain, then, “It’s raining.” And then he sat down, back against the wall. The camera turned around to film his bed again, and the nurses who walked by the doorway, in the open area outside his room.

It was a good thing he _was_ so popular, he thought. He would never have been able to pay the medical bills without this sort of success - he was on his own, financially. He had been since he was seventeen.

“We’re speaking about palliative care again. They believe in ‘realism’.” His left hand lifted to be in the frame, to make the scare quotes, in the air. “Not me.” Breathing. “I believe in hope.”  
  
It wasn’t a good thing to say, which Connor knew because his lungs volunteered their opinion of this with a fantastic bout of coughing. It was also pretty corny, and not what he wanted to have on his record, so he said, “Even my lungs know that’s bull,” and he wheezed out this wobbly breath of something that ought to have been musical. It wasn’t, quite. He didn’t have the breath for proper laughter, and he did not even quite remember what it sounded like when he did: it had been years since he had fully been able to catch his breath.  
  
“My body’s been…” a breath, “feeling it lately. It’s... cold.” The camera twisted, to be pointed at his feet, wrapped up in hospital-provided socks. The fanbase had always wondered what RK800 wore - they’d only ever seen caught glimpse of hospital dressing gowns, and once, the sleeve of an oversized hoodie. The hoodie had caused endless speculation. Connor rested his head on the wall behind him, eyes closed. Filming this had been exhausting, and he hadn’t done so much as walk two steps.  
  
Nurse Turner was right. He should have been in bed. “I’m not sure I’m.. going to make another.. video.” It hurt, to admit this out loud. Something lodged at the back of his throat which was not an inability to breathe, it was a hard lump that he had to swallow around. Connor didn’t talk about this often, because it was a fucking given, he was in a hospital bed. He wasn’t out insisting on working, or studying until he dropped dead.  
  
Connor was here because he wanted to live. Because if there was going to be a set of lungs for him, they would be coming to the hospital, not to the Detroit Police Department’s newest rookie who couldn’t even breathe.  
  
“These videos are usually funny.” Apology, to the stream. He shifted, to fish the palliative care pamphlets from his wastepaper basket, so he could show the camera. One of the pamphlets - though torn in two - had a happy smiling family on the cover, with a teen in a wheelchair giving the camera a thumbs up while her father beamed. Another puff of not-laughter, just wheezing, and Connor said, “Let’s talk... how to make a better palliative care pamphlet. Step one: don’t be happy to get rid of her.”  
  
He filled up the remaining four minutes of his video offering his opinion on the language used, until he could only say, “‘kay,” with a rattle to his voice. He had been speaking too much. Connor had gotten back into bed sometime in the course of the recording, and the camera was now filming the reflection of the phone’s _charging_ light in the metal sidearm of his bed. Connor’s brown curls barely poked out over the top of the rung. He knew this position would shield his face. “ … sleep.” Not that he would have had the presence of mind to stop filming, if it didn’t.  
  
Connor uploaded this video the next day, after clipping out his sleep. God knows why, he still had people signing up to his patreon. Did they know he used the money to pay for his hospital bed?  
  
He didn’t have the energy to think about it. He spent the next two days asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Markus almost said something, asked some question - he turned back around in the doorway, hand on the frame - but Connor saw him decide it was too prying. Instead Markus said, “You deserve to feel better.”
> 
> Connor said, with a tired hand-wave, “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL HERE I AM, back again after Far Too Long, because I wrote an entire chapter and forgot to post it for a month. I love these two nerds.

****RKatehundred**** : Hang in there! We have loved following your journey and supporting you this far, I really believe you can beat this. Fighting!

 ** **valewinnie**** : we first started following your journey when my sister was diagnosed. She lost her fight last year but your videos have been so educational. We wouldn’t have been as ready for it if we didn’t have your channel, RK800.

 ** **Juniperjerry5**** : GUYS what if this is his real goodbye video. He doesn’t even say goodbye, he just drifts off to sleep  
**RKatehundred:** he doesn’t have to say goodbye ‘properly’. He said he isn’t sure he’s making another and that’s his decision. He probably wants to be with his family   
****Juniperjerry5**** : @RKatehundred Yeah, but aren’t we sort of his family? :/  
 ** **deathhhpositivity:**** @Juniperjerry5 …. No….. ?  
  


Markus had first stumbled across the RK800 community around this time, two years ago. Carl’s health had really started to deteriorate, and like most (most) of the people who found their way to RK800’s channel, he had been looking for answers. How were they meant to navigate the hospital system? What did end-of-life care look like? What should they be prepared for?

RK800 had never died, but he had seen a lot of people who had. He spoke frankly with the camera about losing other people in his ward, which had led to him landing the phone in the first place - he talked at length about the secret currency of hospitals (cheese and crackers were the equivalent to a prison’s cigarettes) and where to find the best vending machines ( ** **every**** hospital he’d been to had had the best machine outside the staff-only cafe, no matter where it was). He talked about death, frankly - about the bodies he had seen, of people whom he cared about, and what happens to the body as it dies. The greying-out of eyes as they starve of oxygen, yes, but also the way people get quiet, and stop eating, and, “The nurses say hearing is the last sense to leave, so it’s still worth talking, even when they’re asleep.” 

And all of it, with a razor-sharp sense of humour, accompanied by that breathy not-quite-laugh.  
  
The latest update to RK800’s channel, when Markus found it, was a couple of days old. It was an early, crisp morning towards the tail end of Winter, and he was waiting for his windscreen to properly defrost before he started driving; it had been weeks since RK had last uploaded. The last video - RK800 out-loud musings on whether therapy cats might have an interest in eating their clients’ corpses - had been deliberately light in a way that wasn’t typical for RK800. He’d never cheapened the impact of his disease before. It was worrying.  
  
Markus smiled to see the little notification bell.

The car’s windscreen was defrosted. He connected the Youtube video to his car’s bluetooth and set off the work, intending to listen to it as though a podcast. RK800 rarely had much to show them besides the inside of a hospital room. Like most of RK800’s fanbase, Markus had seen more than enough of those. He pulled onto the freeway and listened all the way through to the rattle in RK800’s voice as he grew more and more tired, breath not quite reaching laughter. RK800 fell asleep.  
  
Markus pulled into hour-only parking in front of Detroit’s little hospital as RK800’s breathing evened out The engine cut off. The video stopped.

Markus worked in a rehabilitation centre he’d built from the ground-up with his father’s money, next to the hospital. It was targeted at connecting people who had had substance abuse problems with avenues out, and supports that they wouldn’t normally have been offered - he hadn’t ever gone to college, himself, but Markus was very charismatic, and he knew how to work with businesses in the Detroit area to guarantee work for vulnerable (including ex cons), or how to source social workers, or organise mental health ‘days’ which built communities out of people trying to get clean, rather than people fixing for a hit. Carl’s death had hit both Markus and Leo, hard, though Leo had been more or less cut out of the will (Markus was ‘trustee’ until Leo was three years clean). The least he could do - he had thought, when Leo had overdosed and almost died, himself, a week after the funeral - the **_**least**_** he could do was **_**something**_**.

He had more pamphlets to drop off in the hospital’s waiting room, today, and he’d duck in for his morning coffee.

Markus reached the cafe just as it was opening. He was not the only early riser. There were a couple of young women (sisters, he guessed) who were waiting for their coffees, a young man in a wheelchair sipping at a milkshake whilst being glared at by a nurse (dressed in blue scrubs), and another, elderly man who was trying to convince the poor cashier to sell him a chicken sandwich. The sandwiches didn’t come out until 11:00am. Markus tuned that conversation out, and - after the two girls had scurried off with their coffees - he was left with nothing to do besides listen in to the conversation happening between nurse and patient, on the far side of the room.  
  
“-amme, Connor, you know how strict they are with their procedures.”  
  
“It’s within the allowed calorie limits.” Connor - the young man - took another sip of his milkshake. He didn’t take a lot at once. Markus turned his eyes to watch him, more fully, drawn by something he didn’t quite register - something…  
  
“You need to eat something else today, Con.”  
  
Connor looked down. Markus felt something sink in his stomach. “I’m not really hungry, Anne.” Connor tried to make this sound casual. There was some note in his voice that struck as very familiar, the... Offhand…

Appetite was one of the first things to make an exit, before the soul. Connor and the nurse - Anne - shared a look, which made Markus think that they were thinking precisely this same thing, and then someone to his right said, “Can I help you,sir?”  
  
Connor’s eyes flicked over Anne’s shoulder to meet Markus’, and he realised he was staring. The cashier had dealt with the man who wanted a sandwich, and was now waiting for Markus to place an order - he stepped forward to do so, not quite sheepish to have been caught but certainly startle. Carl had _hated_ it when people stared. The vague notion of familiarity dismissed, Markus got his hands on his morning mocha and he would have been out the door, except -  
  
 _Beepbeepbeepbeep!_  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“Language, Nurse Turner.”

Anne absently shoved at Connor for the chastising, eyes still on her pager; Markus was pleased to see Connor’s smirk. The boy breathed something almost like…. Laughter? It drew Markus’ eyes, again, even as he was trying to accept his coffee. “I’m needed,” Nurse read from the pager - “I’m on call, I’ve got to run, can you-” she thought better of it before she even said it, “I’ll get someone from transport to run you back up?”  
  
“Go. I’ll be fine.” He was reaching down for - not for the wheelchair’s brakes, no: for his oxygen line. There was a tank, hooked to the back of his chair.

Nurse Turner still hesitated.  
  
Markus said, “I -” even though he had not even been a part of the conversation. Connor’s eyes snapped to his, again: they were chocolate brown, and alive in a way that disagreed with the sallow of his skin. “I could take you. My name’s Markus, I work at the … rehab centre across the street.” Like these were qualifying factors. He was a total stranger. He didn’t know what had made him -  
  
It was good enough for Nurse Turner. She seized his arm, “Lifesaver,” and then she scurried off, at a jog.  
  
“Sir,” the barista repeated, and Markus took his mocha to-go from her insistent hand… meaning he had only one hand to push a wheelchair with. Not a problem he had anticipated having.

“I’m… sorry, I wasn’t planning to push a…?” he tried to be good humoured about it, and Connor breathed a huff of not-laughter (again, something nagged at Markus’ brain), and reached out a hand to take it from him: he could hold onto both cups, milkshake and mocha, while Markus pushed.

Markus switched the foot-brake off the back of the wheelchair, easily, and they started moving. Connor could technically stand, for short periods of time, but true mobility was beyond him, without an aid.  
  
Connor didn’t think about this, as he let a stranger (always strangers, in a hospital) walk him through the hospital lobby. He thought about the small collection of things he could deduce about this man, a game made out of what he could see.  
  
The heterochromia had been the first thing to draw his attention, but there were other things - he was mild mannered. His smile was very nice. He knew exactly where to reach for the hospital wheelchair’s brakes, to turn them off, and though Connor had not said a floor number he had not had trouble finding the elevators which ran up through the heart of the building. Markus had done this before. In this hospital, even.  
  
Also, with his order scribbled on the side of the cup, Connor knew he ordered mochas, at 8:30am.

They reached the lift. Markus did not ask Connor the floor number to key in - he trusted that Connor would reach across to press the button, and he did. Unfortunately, it had the word, PAEDIATRICS, written next to it.  
  
“You’re in paeds?” no judgement, just curiosity.  
  
“They don’t have an adult bed. I’m 19.”

“That’s young,” Markus said, without thinking. It could have been tactless, but Connor stretched his neck up, to look at him, and Markus found that same half-smile he had seen Connor give his nurse, when she’d hit him.  
  
“Not what statisticians will tell you,” Connor disagreed. Light. He quite liked it when people said what was on their mind - he was dying. He didn’t have the patience for tiptoeing.

Markus smiled, wry and apologetic.

This was Connor’s first interaction with Markus Manfred. They said goodbye once Markus had helped him back into bed, and they’d made some conversation about whether the Chevrolet was still there (it wasn’t, Markus said, but Connor did not get up to check, himself). Markus almost said something, asked some question - he turned back around in the doorway, hand on the frame - but Connor saw him decide it was too prying. Instead Markus said, “You deserve to feel better.”

Connor said, with a tired hand-wave, “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.”

Markus softened. “It was nice meeting you, Connor.”

A goodbye, if Connor had ever heard one. It had been nice, for a while, to have someone... His own age. Almost, anyway. Connor wished him a good day at work. Markus left, then sheepishly returned to seize his cup of coffee from Connor’s bedside table, and then he was gone.

So that was what having a life looked like.

Connor had taken one trip down to get a strawberry milkshake from the cafe in the lobby, and he was already exhausted.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes, Connor thought hospitals were their own sort of purgatory. They occupied this space on the peripheral, a part of a society but apart from it, as well, where people waited for things to happen. There were some people who stopped in with their Chevrolets on their way to Canada, and there were some people who stayed, as he did, watching whole days be swallowed in a blink, only to be spat out as forever-long when they grew large enough in number to form a week. An in-between space. Alive and dead.  
  
He had not uploaded another video, since his last. He’d thought about it, but the effort of swallowing enough calories to count as ‘ _within allowed limits for transplant’_ was challenge enough in itself - he choked on it sometimes, like forcing thick sludge through a fine sieve. Proof he wanted to live in how he forced it down. There was courage in giving in; Connor had never pretended otherwise. He had taken care, in his videos, to not imply that this hospital ward was split into people who fought hard enough and those who didn’t - those who wanted it badly enough and those who ‘deserved’ anything less. He had seen people break on not wanting to do it anymore. He had seen people choose their sanity over literally choking, every day, for some slim shot that wouldn’t work.

Early on, RK800 - the persona - had pretended not to notice these choices, because airing them had seemed too much like ratting them out. He never named anyone, but it had felt like sharing a side of this condition with the world that was usually kept hidden. Sometimes, it was easier, and more comfortable, and felt safer, to hold his breath until he had to take the next one. Sometimes other people just didn’t breathe in again.  
  
But lying to YouTube had never proven marketable, and he wanted to live, and he wanted it badly. He swallowed this mouthful and the next, and there was nothing cowardly about that either.

Nurse Turner snapped open the blinds for him one morning, a week and a half later. She put his milkshake - she got it along with her morning coffee now, it saved him the trip - on his bedside table, and told him that his oxygen was low. Connor reminded her he had a lung disease.

He had been able to feel it coming for a while.  
  
“Want some company today?” Anne was a busy person, but she sometimes dropped in to play a game of cards with him. It sounded like too much effort. His arms were heavy.  
  
“I’m okay.”  
  
Nurse Turner stood, and came to brush her fingers through his hair. She did not tut at him, but she had been his nurse for several years.  
  
“Can,” he said, barely. It was more of a whisper than a word. He swallowed and tried again, “My phone?” It was still in service, though he did not anticipate renewing next month’s contract. Nurse Turner did not hesitate - she leant over to retrieve it from his bedside table and passed it to him, before she asked:  
  
“Another video?”  
  
“Phonecall.”

She wondered who. Connor didn’t have anyone to call. He saw her eyes flicker up to meet his, and the way she almost said something, but instead she said, “Press the button if you need me.”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
She left.

Connor looked at the phone in his hand, for a while. It was time. If ever there was a time to do it, it was now. He swiped to unlock the screen and typed in the last phone number he remembered, but it might have changed, by now. Connor’s hadn’t. He had kept it the same. She’d never texted. Never called. Amanda Stern had not wanted anything to do with him. The diagnosis had been the final straw in the number of fuck-ups that he’d made.  
  
He had had to do this himself. He had wanted to live and he’d had to find a way to do it, himself, and to some extent, he was very angry with her. Most of the time, he was angry.  
  
But he was dying.

Connor hit the green _call_ button, and it dialled. What was he going to say? He mightn’t say anything. The idea of leaving without a word, though, seemed…

Anyway, he missed her, sometimes. When he was young, you know, they’d had a flower garden together. He hadn’t liked the dirt, or even much the flowers, but he’d enjoyed the landscaping. Building the little fence around the garden bed. Learning about the different types of rock, because he turned them over in his hands and Amanda (always Amanda; never ‘mum’) leant over to tell him: igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic. Igneous were his favourite.  
  
He’d once had a rock collection.  
  
He would not say he forgave her, because he didn’t. But he would say hello. He waited.

The phone rang through.

She did not pick up.

* * *

Dark flickered on screen. He hadn’t turned off the automatic time stamp - it was 3:12am (and seventeen seconds), exactly, when the camera turned on. “-ime, Con,” someone was saying (to the camera, maybe? Or to someone just behind RK800 - it was difficult to tell). “We - oh, George! We need the -”  
  
“Shit.” RK800’s voice.  
  
The camera dropped. Fumbling, with the sound of distant conversation in the background - “...insurance?” someone asked, and RK800’s answer, muffled by the scraping of mic on fabric as he scooped it back up. “Consent,” another voice said. It was almost pitch black in the room. Even with the camera up, there was little to see besides what could be silhouetted by the light of the full moon through the window by his bed - it caught the shape of a clipboard, and RK800’s pale white hand reaching for it. He put the camera down, turned toward the ceiling, so he could sign.  
  
“What happened?” rasped.  
  
“A truck rolled on the ice. He was 18. We have to move now, they’re already two hours out-time, and they’re across town.”  
  
Connor’s chest hurt, but it was probably his lungs. They tried to turn themselves inside out - he was sitting up, which he shouldn’t have been doing - and after he had finished gasping for air, he asked, “I thought it was one?”  
  
“Both. There’ll be a recovery period, and you’ll always have to -”  
  
His voice wavered (something thick in his throat) when he said, “Holy **_**shit**_** , Anne.”

A beat.  
  
“I know.”  
  
Movement, again, and the camera caught flashes of people in scrubs, and the floor. He was moving. They were busy. “Turn that off. We need to confirm patient details.”  
  
No complaints from RK800. There was a flash of the hospital ward - the wider space, outside his room - and then the video cut out. In total, it was two minutes long: disjointed, unedited, and not nearly as careful to protect his privacy as Connor typically was (the channel knew Anne - but Con? George? Both new names, the community would have a field day). But he uploaded it as they loaded him into the back of patient transport, and - well, maybe it was the adrenaline, but he all of a sudden could not sit still.  
  
He titled it, **_**holy shit.**_**  
  
It took only minutes for the first comments to appear. In order:

****Hannah_loves_turtles:**** oh my god  
  
 ** **Harlequin94:**** JESUS CHRIST RK800!!!

****RKstan7:**** first  
  
 ** **KeatsinLove:**** this must be huge for you. Are you okay?

Connor stared at the last one. Anne had not been allowed in the back with him - she had patients besides just Connor, and her primary work was with children. He had an unfamiliar Doctor with him, but she was rushing to read his medical notes, and a social worker, whom he assumed must have been the man to suggest palliative care, a couple of weeks ago.  
  
His insides twisted. He’d called Amanda, just this morning, she hadn’t…  
  
RK800 never replied to the comments. He had a Twitter, and an Instagram - he’d respond there. But never the YouTube comments.

He didn’t wait to talk himself out of it.

* * *

Markus stared at the message on the screen.

He was only awake at 3AM because he was up for a glass of water. Trouble sleeping, lately - the rehab centre was always overfull of people who needed help, without the pairs of hands they needed to provide it. He’d checked his phone because it chimed, literally in his hand, while he was using it as a torch.

The comment had been the first thing he had thought to say. RK800 never replied to the comments. He might, sometimes, respond through his other social media, but Youtube comments were off-limits.

Today a lot of things were changing for him.

****KeatsinLove:**** this must be huge for you. Are you okay?  
****RK800:**** Well, something’s happened and I’m in the hospital right now, but I’ll keep you posted.

Markus smiled. The razor-sharp was there. RK800 had sounded breathless in the video (though he must have been breathless for weeks at this point); that did not mean he lacked that same wit. Dry humour. Did he want a reply?  
  
He must have. He wouldn’t have responded if he didn’t want something back.

By the time Markus had responded, there were half a dozen others on the same comment thread, with various messages of 'omg' and one with their life story packed into a comment, to express "how much rk800 meant to them". He was not discouraged.

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 are you going to have a shower after? You’ll be able to stand. Showers can be magic.

****RK800:**** @KeatsinLoveI miss showers

Nerves, Markus realised. He worked with people who were edgy every day - this was different, maybe, but the undercurrent to it was nervousness. Why was he on YouTube at a time like this?

But Markus was not the only one of RK800's followers to have noticed RK800's hospital room was always empty.

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 you're in good hands. We'll all be here to see you on the other side.

No reply. Markus stayed awake, watching comment after comment trickle in as people vied for RK800’s attention, jealous that he’d replied to Markus on one of the most terrifying but exhilarating nights of his life. Carl had been quite a well-known artist, you know. Markus wasn’t a stranger to the concept of fame, of how people clamored for attention. Was that what RK800 needed, now?  
  
He hadn’t replied, but Markus couldn’t think of a way he _would_ have replied, besides saying thank-you. And Markus didn’t need a thank you.  
  
He would not get back to sleep, tonight. He doubted RK800 would, either. The time stamp in the video had said 3:00-something in the morning - it was now almost 4:00.

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 I’m awake with you. I was up for water. It’s snowing, where I am, the air’s really dry. 

It was generic. Markus’ comment was quickly swallowed by the stream of replies, each of them with something more important to say than boring conversation about the weather. Markus wasn’t sure what had made him offer it. Carl had always wanted things to just be … normal.  
  
If it was the wrong thing to say, he was sure RK800 would ignore it.

****RK800**** : @KeatsinLove Why Keats in Love?

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 His poetry is sad. You can tell he was in love. You read him?

****RK800**** : @KeatsinLove “My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.”

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 to be fair, in your case, that’s not saying much

(Somewhere across town, Connor laughed, that breathy not-quite-laughter. He would have new lungs when he woke up. If he woke up. Would he be able to laugh properly?)

****RK800**** : @KeatsinLove “Heard melodies are sweet,” my friend, “but those unheard are sweeter.”  
  
RK800 was telling him to shut up. 

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 “Beauty is truth; truth, beauty”. 

A couple of minutes before RK800’s next reply came through:

****RK800**** : @KeatsinLove Thank you for this, tonight.

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 my father passed away last year. I wasn’t alone. Just returning the favor.

****RK800**** : @KeatsinLove You’re really staying up all night?

****KeatsinLove:**** @RK800 I start early, anyway. I’ll have two coffees.

There was a lull in the YouTube comments, for a little while, and then - a ping. From Instagram, no less. It was the one social media that Markus had linked on his YouTube profile; he only used his YouTube account to watch things, but he linked his Instagram everywhere. It was full of inspirational quotes, and photos of activities and days-out organised by the rehab centre, and the ocean.

He had never thought to be self-conscious about it before, but RK800 had never DMed him personally through that RK800-and-a-check-next-to-his-name Instagram account, either.  
  
 _If you're free, I'd like the company?_

They spoke about poetry, and the weather, and heat-moisture exchangers (RK800’s topic, because of the dry air), and other small talk that made things seem more normal. RK800 was being prepped for surgery, so there were times he disappeared and came back, but Markus didn’t mind waiting - he was up and out of bed now, eating a bowl of cereal at his breakfast bar (he took a shot of the fruit loops for RK800, who asked what he was doing), and reading the news.

Much later, RK800 sent:  
  
 _This is it. Going in now. Thanks again._

It was 5:23am. Markus returned:

_Be careful_.

He put his phone down. He went to make himself his first cup of coffee for the day - he’d pick up the second he’d promised on his way in to work, from the hospital cafe, again.  
  
His phone pinged.

_I don’t know. These surgeons have got knives. They say they want to save my life, but I feel sure they’re going to use them somehow._

Markus smiled. And that was the last he, or anyone else, heard of RK800, for weeks and weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUP here I am. I have actually very barely used Instagram. You know I was babysitting this 11yo and she asked if I had a TikTok? And I said "No, but I did get an Instagram recently!" & apparently Instagram is old. Like if a 102yo had just gotten a Facebook and excitedly told you they were hip and with the times. 
> 
> Anyway, loving your reviews & kudos, they give me life! Much faster update this time because I remembered to post it when it was written. RIP me. Happy holidays!


End file.
